by Oxford-born visual artist Jesse Darling has just won this year’s Turner Prize. Previous winners include Damien Hirst, Tracey Emin, Rachel Whiteread, and Anthony Gormley.
Accepting the award, Darling championed the importance of the arts, criticizing former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher for “paving the way for the greatest Tory trick ever, which is to British working people believe that study, self-expression, and what broadsheet supplements call culture, is only for certain types of people from certain socio-economic backgrounds.”
“I want to say don’t buy in, I’m talking to the public, I’m talking to the British public, don’t buy in, it’s for everyone,” he said, before hanging a small Palestinian flag.
Asked what he would do with the £25,000 prize money, Darling said it would “put a new tooth in, pay my rent and buy my friends a drink.” The jury awarded the art prize to Darling after recommending “use”. common materials and objects such as concrete, welded barriers, hazard tape, office files and netted curtains, to express a familiar but delirious world invoking societal breakdown, his presentation makes the views of labour, class , the British and the betrayal of power.”
They also praised his ability to show the “fundamental fragility of the world”. Darling beat artists Ghislaine Leung, Rory Pilgrim and Barbara Walker to the top prize.
So who is the 41-year-old award-winning artist? Here’s all the information about this year’s winner.
Darling was educated in London
He obtained his BA from Central Saint Martins, and his MFA from the Slade. He had initially studied at Gerrit Rietveld’s Academy in Amerstand for a year before, as Darling put it, “he took me out for bad behaviour”.
He won the award for two shows
Darling won this year’s Turner Prize for his 2022 exhibitions, No Medals, No Ribbons, at Modern Art Oxford, and Enclosure at Camden Art Centre.
No Metals, No Ribbons looked at how systems of power are fragile, like bodies. Enclosures continued this exploration, looking at how vulnerability, often associated with living people, can be found in society and technology.
“Darling suggests that all technologies, bodies and cultures are inherently tangible but that we continually give meaning to them in order to survive,” explained Artforum in 2018.
It has been exhibited around the world, including at the Venice Biennale and the Tate Britain in 2019
Recent solo shows also include Gravity Road, Kunsteverein Freiburg, Freiburg (2020), Selva Oscura, Galerie Sultana, Paris (2019) and La Friche Belle de Mai, Marseille (2019).
Other group shows include Crip Time, Museum MMK für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt (2021); Three, Four Trees, EA Shared Space, Tbilisi, (2020); A Fine Line, Kunsthalle Bremen, Bremen (2020); Transcorporealities, Ludwig Museum, Cologne (2019) and Body Splits, SALTS, Basel (2019).
The multidisciplinary artist usually uses cheap everyday objects to create his work
“For most of my practice I just used what was cheap or cheap and easy to find,” Darling told Modern Art Oxford in February 2022. “There is poetry in objects that everyone can recognize from their lives everyday, like a shortcut to meaning. . . I find myself ambivalently focused on petrochemical materials – steel and plastic, silicone.”
“These materials have produced my body, so to speak, and they tell their own stories. You could say it’s autobiographical, but my autobiography is not just about me – it’s a story about the enclosure act, the revolution industrialism, the British Empire, the transatlantic slave trade, Henry Ford, Walt Disney, the World Wars, mine and miners’ strikes, the welfare state and its dissolution, the failed sexual revolution, Margaret Thatcher, Tony Blair, the two towers , Brexit and Covid 19.”
Many of Darling’s pieces also refer to queer themes, using subtle allusions and symbolism. The transgender artist previously said: “I don’t want to face life straight from a quieter place.
Darling has also published a collection of poetry, Virgins
Critics described Darling’s book of poetry, released in January, as “scratchy, incisive and alert to both the bullshit and beauty of living”, and a “beautiful doreverent thing”.
He has done many odd jobs over the years
“I’ve done almost everything for money, from music journalism to web copywriting to translation to circus clowning to sex work,” Darling told Rhizome magazine in 2012. “And while those things aren’t important in their specificity, they are ” It is significant in terms of how I think about making and work and the condition of work, or work, in general. I have to admit that I have been doing politics slowly, by accident.”
“I didn’t come from a straight art school background, it took me a long time to figure out how to qualify art as work, for example, and some of this art world shit is so rare, full of thoughtless privilege and fatigue tired that means nothing outside the circle. Right now I don’t claim to be outside the circle, but I still struggle with that.”
What is the Turner Prize?
The Turner Prize is an annual art prize awarded for “an outstanding exhibition or other presentation of their work in the previous year”. This year’s jury, chaired by Tate Britain director Alex Farquharson, included Wellcome Collection director Melanie Keen, Camden Art Center director Martin Clark, Cromwell Place chief executive and artist director Helen Nisbet.
Who else was shortlisted this year?
This year’s shortlisted artists were Ghislaine Leung, Rory Pilgrim and Barbara Walker.
British conceptual artist, born in Stockholm, Leung was named for Fountains, her solo exhibition at Simian, Copenhagen, which used objects related to children, such as toys and monitors, to ask questions about time, leisure and labour. “The jury particularly praised the warm, funny and transcendent qualities behind the sleek aesthetic and conceptual nature of Leung’s work,” said a Tate Britain press release.
Multidisciplinary artist Rory Pilgrim was nominated for RAFTS at the Serpentine and Barking Town Halls, as well as a live performance of the work at Cadogan Hall. The jury praised Pilgrim for creating “beautiful and haunting musical arrangements” that “brought light to the voices of their colleagues”.
Barbara Walker was nominated for Burden of Proof at the international exhibition platform Sharjah Biennial 15. Walker’s presentation looked at the impact of the Windrush scandal, drilling down on racial identity, exclusion and power. The jury praised her ability to “use portraits of a monumental scale to tell stories that are equally memorable, while at the same time fostering understanding and intimacy across the full range of her work”.
Where will you see the work?
The works of the four shortlisted artists are now on display at Towner Eastbourne.
Turner Prize 2023, Towner Eastbourne, until April 14, 2024; townereastbourne.org.uk
